Amazon (AMZN) has opened experience showrooms in Lennar (LEN) smart homes, according to CNBC. The combination is meant to sell the home, smart home products and the services needed for both. The homes have Wi-Fi built into the walls and will be able to showcase Amazon's products like the Ring doorbell and Alexa. There are currently 14 showrooms nationwide, but expansion plans are already taking place.Reference Link

NetApp shipments of NVMe solutions is a 'significant advance', says DA Davidson. DA Davidson analyst Mark Kelleher kept his Buy rating and $83 price target on NetApp (NTAP) after its Q4 earnings beat, saying the company has been successful in executing a realignment into Flash storage system market over the past two years. Kelleher also notes that even as the headwinds for NetApp's mature markets moderate, its growth products also provide "strong revenue tailwind". The analyst further contends that NetApp is taking market share from Dell and EMC, while the ramp in cloud services by Amazon Web Services (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG), and Microsoft (MSFT) is driving new customer acquisitions and revenue growth.

Amazon Web Services is looking to invest in Chile for the long term as part of the company's expansion plans in Latin America, Reuters reports, citing the remarks from an official with the company to Chilean President Pinera. The report adds that the AWS exec wanted to meet with Pinera and stated: "We think Chile is super important to Latin America and the rest of the world." Reference Link

Smart speakers continue to be the world's fastest-growing consumer technology segment, with year-on-year growth in Q1 2018 of 210% as shipments reached 9 million units, Canalys says. Google (GOOG, GOOGL) took the top spot, beating Amazon (AMZN) for the first time, shipping 3.2 million of its Google Home and Home Mini devices, against the 2.5 million Echo devices shipped by Amazon. The US market share fell below 50% for the first time, partly due to Google and Amazon's focus on expanding beyond their home markets, but also because of the increased traction that the technology is seeing with new vendors in markets such as China and South Korea. Vendors shipped 1.8 million smart speakers into the channel in Q1 2018 in China, while Korea overtook the UK to become the third largest market with 730,000 shipments. Alibaba (BABA) finished third overall and retained its number one position in China with 1.1 million Tmall Genie speaker shipments in Q1 2018.

Google says in a blog post: "We're committed to building products and programs that help small businesses grow. Unfortunately, we continue to receive complaints from business owners about calls they receive claiming to be from Google. Often these calls are actually third-party companies who are trying to take advantage of them. Sometimes these scammers claim to be able to improve a business' Google Search rankings, other times they charge money for services that Google offers for free. Understandably, these scams are frustrating for business owners and for us at Google... In the past, we've taken various actions to try to stop these predatory practices. And today we're taking additional steps to address the bad actors that are targeting businesses. Specifically, as of today: We're taking legal action against Kydia Inc. d/b/a BeyondMenu, Point Break Media, LLC (and affiliated entities), and Supreme Marketing Group, Inc. d/b/a Small Business Solutions. We hope this sends the message to other scammers out there that we will not hesitate to take legal action against them. We've developed new automated and manual techniques to better identify Google accounts tied to scam efforts. We've updated our policies, so that when we identify Google accounts tied to scams we're better able to take action-whether that's removing the accounts from our platforms entirely or limiting their capabilities. We've created a new tool that lets business owners report scammy practices and policy violations, and provide the specific information needed for us to take action against these third parties. We've started providing resources and education to local small business organizations and the partners we work with through our Get Your Business Online program, so they can empower their communities to identify, prevent, and report scams. We're launching the Google My Business Partners program. The program will give business owners a directory of trusted partners to choose from when they need help managing their listings. We'll continue to take action against these scams and the companies behind them by evolving our products and systems to identify bad actors, making policy changes, making law enforcement referrals and taking legal action when possible." Reference Link